The U.S. unemployment rate may not return to the more than half-century lows recorded under former President Donald Trump, according to Esther George, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Jonathan Garber for FOXBusiness:
The national unemployment rate is currently at 5.4%, a pandemic-era low, but remains elevated from the 3.5% that was reached under Trump. Many workers remain on the sidelines due to generous unemployment benefits, the closing of schools and day care, and fears over the virus.
The Federal Reserve’s dual mandate calls for the central bank to achieve maximum employment and price stability. However, the central bank last year said it would allow inflation to run above its 2% target “for some time” in order to achieve its employment objective. The Fed as recently as 2019 thought a 4.1% unemployment rate represented “full employment.”
That was until Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation helped the U.S. economy, before the pandemic, achieve its lowest unemployment rate since the 1950s. The policies helped achieve record low unemployment for Asians, Blacks and Hispanics.
Workers have been returning to the labor market amid a reopening of the economy, but policies put in place by the Biden administration have limited job gains.
Biden extended the extra $300 per week in supplemental unemployment benefits until September, something Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted is having an impact on people returning to work.
Other Biden policies, like the president’s assault on the oil industry, are also impacting the labor market.
Oil-producing states like Texas (6.2%), New Mexico (7.6%) and Alaska (6.6%) all have unemployment rates well above the 5.4% national average as Biden’s policies have limited production and increased reliance on OPEC.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, that 3.5% U.S. unemployment figure was a 50-year record low; beyond “full employment,” so it’d be very difficult to achieve under current conditions and policies. Obviously, the U.S is Apple’s largest market, by far, so the health of the U.S. economy is very important to the company.